Georgetown attracts students from across the United States and around the world. The campus itself (which slightly exceeds 100 acres in size) is international and multilingual. Many of its graduate programs enjoy special relationships with distinguished international institutions, relationships which enable Georgetown students to significantly enrich their educational experiences.

Beyond the campus, students find a city with 250 libraries, a multiplicity of museums and galleries, distinguished theatre, a rich array of both classical and popular music, international restaurants, and a deep involvement in thought and research. The Washington area is a center of scientific activity and home to a large number of writers, thinkers, journalists, and public intellectuals. It is a center for public policy, for biomedical study, the fine arts, and for such disciplines as demography, economics, and political science. Metropolitan Washington is now a major telecommunications center, the home of such resources as National Public Radio, the Association of Research Libraries, the Coalition for Networked Information, Educom, and the Internet Society.

The University is a major institution within the city, a resource, a partner, and a friend. It supports the city through contributed services of both a social and intellectual nature. It is also an international resource, offering both the results of science and scholarship and both personal and institutional contributions to efforts to ameliorate the human condition.

Comprising three campuses—the Main Campus, Medical Center, and Law Center—Georgetown offers its students the benefits of a major research university within an ethos which encourages the development of a vital, closely-linked intellectual community. Joint-appointed faculty and cooperative programming bridge the three campuses and buttress the University’s academic enterprise.

In 1995 the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences celebrated its 175th anniversary. Its programs continue to grow and develop. The Graduate School is now the second largest at Georgetown and offers multiple programs in 34 separate departments. One characteristic of the School’s dramatic growth in the last decade has been the development of an increased number of joint-programming opportunities. Students may now pursue courses of study in more than 40 separate joint-program configurations. New programs and further joint-program opportunities are also under discussion and review. Growth in enrollments has been accompanied by significant growth in both faculty and financial aid resources.

One of the most striking aspects of the University’s development has been the degree to which it remains faithful to the original vision of its founder, who sought a University that would be open to students of all religious professions and all classes. Inclusivity has, in effect, marked the University from the beginning. In the late nineteenth century Georgetown became the first major American university to have an African-American president, Fr. Patrick Healy, for whom the University’s signature structure, the Healy Building, is named. Throughout its history Georgetown has held firm to its deep belief in freedom of inquiry. It has also enjoyed a reputation for its abiding commitment to the principle that the University’s chief goals continue to be the development of new knowledge, the dissemination of that knowledge, and the enlistment of its faculty and students in the task of serving the society of which it is a part.